The first humans to set foot on Bougainville-Buka,
some 28,000 years ago, came from the northwest - either directly, from
southeastern New Ireland or, more probably, by stages from there via the Feni
and Nissan Islands. The present open-sea distances between New Ireland and
Buka, via Feni and Nissan, are no wider than 72 kilometres. Their coasts may
have been even closer during the Pleistocene period, when the sea level
throughout this area had been low3ered appreciably as a result of the
impounding of much of the earth's waters in vast continental ice sheets. But
even 72-kilometre stretches of ocean were well within the seafaring range of
these pioneers: their canoes were certainly seaworthy enough, and the
inter-island distances sere within visibility range (Lewis 1972).

There is no mystery about how the ancestors of those
pioneers came to be in New Ireland at that early date. Archaeological evidence
from both New Guinea and Australia (which were periodically joined together
during low-sea-level phases of the Pleistocene) shows that humans had begun to
cross over from insular Indonesia as early as 50,000 years ago, and that some
of them had spread eastward into New Britain and New Ireland by about 30,000
years ago. It is also quite likely that some of the early descendants of the
first Bougainvillians pressed further southeastward, at least as far as the
island of San Cristobal. There is no means of knowing why those pioneers made
their ways to Bougainville, or beyond: escape from victorious enemies?
deliberate search for richer food supplies? need for safe landings during
stormy fishing expeditions? or perhaps, in a few cases, curiosity about
unfamiliar shores?

More certain is how they subsisted. From
archaeological evidence it can be inferred that their diet consisted of forest
vegetables, fish and shellfish, birds, lizards, fruit bats, and rats. Included
among the vegetables they gathered and ate were two species of taro,
Colocasia and Alocasia, some of which may have been 'tended' (i.e.,
semi-domesticated) long before the indigenes began to cultivate them in
gardens. For some 25,000 years after initial settlement, the Bougainvillians
appear to have had little contact with their northwestern homelands, except,
for example, for their import of the galip nut (Camarium indicus),
which they proceeded to plant and use as a favoured food supplement. Even
opossums (Phalanger orientalis), which were to become highly favoured
hunting prey, did not reach Bougainville-Buka un til 3200 years ago. Thus, the
first Bougainvillians were to remain almost entirely isolated from their
northwestern homelands for nearly twenty-five millennia. although they were
isolated, they were evidently not unified, and most certainly not homogenous,
either physically or culturally. During those many millennia, the pioneers'
descendants proliferated and dispersed, mostly in the larger island, where
indigenous terrestrial food resources were richer and more diverse. In time
those little bands of food gatherers and hunters (and in some places,
fishermen), dispersed so widely and remained so scattered that they evolved
into many, sharply different, societies, each with its own language. (A
society as herein defined is a social unit composed of people who reside
adjacently, speak the same language, or languages, and who share, in large
measure and more or less distinctively, a common set of cultural principles,
values, and practices. In some parts of Melanesia a single community
constituted a whole society as well, but in most cases a society contained two
or more communities.) Some of those earlier languages may in the course of
time have died out, but in the year 1939 there were nine of them:

Northern stock

Southern stock

Rotokas family

Nasioi family

1. Rotokas proper

5. Nasioi

2. Eivo

6. Simiku

3. Kunua

7. Nagovisi

4. Keriaka

Terei family

8. Buin

9. Siwai

This classification is based mainly on the degree of
similarity between the languages' vocabularies. In addition there are some
significant differences between the northern and southern stocks with respect
to grammar. For example, the languages of the southern stock classify their
numerals into forty or more categories, according to the nature of the objects
they count; the northern languages lack such a classification but share a
complicated kind of verbal system that differs markedly from the one found in
those of the south. Linguists have not yet calculated how long the two stocks
have been separated, but clearly it must be reckoned in thousands of years.
During this time there developed several other marked differences between the
cultures of the northern and southern societies (including cannibalism and
male initiation rites in the north but not in the south). On the other hand,
both northerners and southerners retained their common practice of affiliating
individuals into matrilineal clans - supra-familial social units made up of
persons related by maternal, rather than than paternal, kin ties. This is
evidently a cultural heritage of their common ancestry from New Ireland and
New Britain, where such matriliny also prevails.

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Another trait shared by the present-day descendants
of both northerners and southerners is their skin colour, which is very black.
Indeed, it is darker than that of any population of present-day Pacific
islanders, including the present-day indigenes of New Ireland, the larger
homeland of the first Bougainvillians. The presence of Bougainville as a
'black spot' in an island world of brownskins (later called redskins) raises a
question that cannot now be answered. Were the genes producing that darker
pigmentation carried by the first Bougainvillain s when they arrived? Or
did they evolve, by natural or by 'social' selection, during the millennia in
which the descendants of those pioneers remained isolated, reproductively,
from neighbouring islanders? Nothing now known about Bougainville;s physical
environment can support an argument for the natural selection of its peoples'
distinctively black pigmentation; therefore a case might be made for social
selection, namely, an aesthetic (and hence reproductive) preference for black
skin. This preference has, by the way, surfaced recently with added political
meaning.

While alike in their distinctive skin colour (and in
the Melanesia-wide frizziness of their hair), the descendants of
Bougainville's pioneer settlers eventually became differentiated into two
major types with respect to some other bodily traits: a taller and broader
northern type, and a shorter, slenderer southern one. This distinction
corresponds to the language differences noted earlier. Bougainvolle's
long-lasting isolation was not ended until about three to four thousand years
ago. Then, people having different physiques, speaking entirely different
kinds of languages, and bearing many cultural innovations, surged from the
west into the Pacific and on into or through New Britain, New Ireland, the Solomons and the New Hebrides. (From the Solomons some of the descendants of
these newcomers moved on into the Gilbert Islands, and thence on to the
Marshalls and Carolines. From the New Hebrides others moved into Fiji and
Tonga and Samoa, where they evolved into the people now known as Polynesians.)
Meanwhile, beginning about 3200 years ago, some bands of those newcomers
settled on Buka and on Bougainville's northern and southwestern coasts. Much
later, the descendants of some of those who had settled on the islands
immediately south of Bougainville, resettled along Bougainville's eastern
coast; the most recent of these movements founded the present-day community of
Roruana, only about a century ago.

The descendants of the newcomers who settled on Buka
and on the fringes of northern Bougainville eventually superseded or mixed
with whatever firstcomers still remained there, as revealed by the entirely
different kinds of languages spoken there today. These newer languages are all
interrelated and they are as different from the earlier ones as is, say,
English from Arabic. They are divided into two groups (see Figure 3); one
consisting of Tinputz, Teop, and Hahon; the other of Petats, Halia, Solos, and
Saposa. All of these newcomer languages are members of a vast family of
languages labelled Austronesian, which originated in south China and/or
Formosa. Austronesian languages proliferated and spread throughout Southeast
Asia (with one branch in far-off Madagascar) and all over the Pacific. They
are found in the islands of Micronesia and Polynesia, and of Melanesia, except
for most of New guinea and pockets of earlier, non-Austronesian languages
elsewhere, including those of Bougainville. (In the connection, some linguists
believe all or most of Melanesia's non-Austronesian languages to be
members of a single, 'genetically' interrelated group which they label
Papuan, but expert opinion is not unanimous on this point.)

As Figure 3 shows, Austronesian languages are spoken
also on Bougainville's central coasts, both east and west. Banoni and closely
related Nagarige-Amun, spoken on the west coast, are direct and fairly recent
offshores of the island's northern Austronesian languages; on the east coast
Torau (also called Roruana) and Papapana are spoken by people whose ancestors
migrated there from the Shortland Islands only a few generations ago. When the
author was on Bougainville in 1938-9 the present site of the town of Arawa was
occupied by a small community speaking an Austronesian language also derived
from the Shortlands at a time somewhat earlier than the arrival of the
speakers of Torau. Now, fifty years later, that language, called Uruava (also
Arawa), has become virtually extinct. Its former speakers have died out and
their offspring have adopted the more prevalent language of their Nasioi-speaking
neighbours, a transformation doubtless furthered by marriages between
immigrants and earlier residents. Some of Bougainville's languages, both
Austronesian and pre-Austronesian, are somewhat mixed, in that they contain
certain words and even grammatical features borrowed from neighbouring
languages.

Like the Uruava, several other bands of Austronesian-speaking
immigrants may have lost both their language and their physical (i.e. genetic)
distinctiveness after settling on Bougainville, but those who did not do so
(including the Banoni, the Roruana, and the present-day residents of Buka and
northernmost Bougainville) remain somewhat lighter in skin colour and
generally taller in stature than their non-Austronesian neighbours.

Accompanying the new languages and genes that the
Austronesian speakers brought to Buka and Bougainville were several other
innovations; these included pottery, obsidian tools, domesticated pigs and
chickens, and probably domesticated dogs. It is likely that they also
introduced new crops and new techniques of gardening, although the idea of
producing food plants - rather than merely collecting or tending wild ones -
may have spread to these islands before then. Moreover, while the languages
and the genes of the newcomers remained mostly on Buka and in the coastal
areas of Bougainville, the cultural innovation brought in by them diffused
throughout the larger island. Thus by the time Europeans 'discovered'
Bougainville, all of its inhabitants were growing most of their vegetable food
while continuing to collect a few wild-growing ones, such as the starchy pith
of the sago palm. While they continued to fish, and to hunt such wild animals
as opossums, flying foxes, birds and bats, they also raised pigs and chickens
for their occasional feasts, and kept dogs as pets and for assistance in
hunting the pigs that had escaped domestication and gone wild. doubtless there
were always regional differences in food-getting; fishing figured larger in
the lives of coast dwellers than of islanders, and gardening required more
effort among mountaineers than among plains-dwellers. but rather than attempt
to reconstruct the changes that had taken place in Bougainvillians' cultures
from the early days of settlement, let us focus on what they had become just
prior to European 'discovery' and colonization.

On evidence that will be given later on this Web
site, the number of persons living on Bougainville-Buka just prior to their
'discovery' by Europeans was about 45,000. This number had been reached
several centuries earlier and had remained, thereafter, a bout the same. Most
of those 45,000 resided in small and widely dispersed hamlets; it was only in
a few places (for example, on beaches adjacent to good fishing, on tiny
offshore islands) that larger settlements, nucleared villages, were to be
found. Except for the island's southeast ti - a heavily forested but otherwise
habitable area - the uninhabited, blank, spots on Figure 4 correspond with
terrain wholly unsuitable for gardening (e.g. very high mountains or extensive
swamps).

Within both hamlets and villages, the basic social
unit (for sleeping, for getting, processing, and consuming food; for raising
children, etc.) was the family-household. This consisted in some cases of
three generations of family members, or of a man and his two, or three, wives
and their offspring; but in most cases it consisted of a monogamous couple and
their own offspring. In addition, every Bougainvillian became at birth a
member of his or her mother's clan, a kind of social unit which had many
shapes and many functions (with regard to property rights, choice of spouse,
religious practice, etc.). First of all, those tribes were in most cases very
small, consisting of no more than a single village, or a few neighbouring
hamlets; in other words, a tribe's 'citizenry' ringed in number from about
twenty persons to seldom more than 300. Secondly, the normal relationship
between neighbouring tribes was characterized by some degree of hostility,
ranging from constant wariness to active warfare. And thirdly,
'chieftainship'- i.e. the kind of leadership characteristic of Bougainville
tribes - varied from place to place, with respect to who the leaders were and
what they did.

Such were the human condition s on Bougainville and
Buka when whites first landed there: in doing so they precipitated, within a
few decades, greater changes than had occurred during the previous 28,000
years.

Every adult visitor to Bougainville-Buka these days
will know that they contain large quantities of valuable ores, but a first view
of the visible landscape is likely to leave two impressions. One is that the
topography is monotonously uniform, a jumble of hills and mountains and some
flat coastal plains. The other superficial impression is that the soil is
everywhere fertile, as indicated by the thick mantle of vegetation that covers
all but the two active volcanic peaks. After a while the initial impression
formed of the topography will be confirmed, but even the most unperceptive
visitor will learn that the mantle of vegetation is extraordinarily varied, and
that the underlying soils also vary greatly in the kinds and amounts of
vegetation they can support. while the islands' rich ores last, and are
profitably mined, their native residents will probably continue to share,
directly or indirectly, in that source of wealth. But when the rich ones are all
gone and the two islands' residents have to depend again on what they can grow
in their soils, their standards of living will inevitably return to levels
simpler than they were when mining began.

Bougainville and Buka Islands form a single land mass
separated from one another by a shallow strait 800 metres wide. Together they
are about 240 kilometres long, and about 64 kilometres across at their widest
point. They are located along a northwest-southeast axis, and are, geologically,
part of the Solomon Islands chain. Their total land area is approximately
9000square kilometres, minus some 13 square kilometeres of lakes and some other
expanses of freshwater swamp. About half of the land area is hilly or
mountainous, with peaks rising to 1500 to 2400 metres, including several active,
dormant, or inactive volcanoes, along with remnants of a geologically ancient
plateau of uplifted oral limestone. This coarse-grained classification of
natural environment is detailed enough for some purposes, but it is inadequate
for anyone seeking deeper understanding of the islands' geographic history and
economic prospects. For such purposes scientists have devised a much
finer-grained classification composed of 'land units' and 'land systems'.
According to this scheme a land unit is one characterised by 'a particular
association of topography, soil, and vegetation' such as, for example, 'a beach
with an average slope of about 10 degrees composed of white sand and supporting
mixed herbaceous vegetation'; or 'a drainage depression of low gradient composed
of submerged peats (up to three feet deep) and supporting tall forest trees
chiefly of the Terminaliabrassi species'.

Needless to say, land systems vary widely in the kinds
of human activity they can support. For example, of the two just delineated, the
Siwai system can and does support fairly intensive growth of indigenous food
plants as well as certain kinds of cash cops; the coastal Jaba system appears to
be suitable only for coconuts and plants with similar growing requirements.
There are many other kinds of land systems on these islands that can support no
food or cash-crop plants at all - and indeed no other conceivable form of human
activity except perhaps swatting mosquitoes or admiring distant views. Some
general conditions can be drawn from a map of the islands' forty distinctive
land systems. first, the environmental diversity helps partly to explain the
cultural diversity that obtains among the islands' several types of subsistence
technologies; between coast-dwellers of the north and the east, etc. While no
human society has its way of life determined in all details by its physical
environment, none is wholly independent of environmental influences. And for
societies with less-developed technologies, including those of the indigenes of
Bougainville-Buka, such influences tend to be more decisive.

Second, and more relevant to present-day concerns, a
land-systems map reveals, in a way that no amount of guesswork and wishful
thinking can deny, how very limited are these islands' surface land resources in
terms of economically feasible agriculture. This needs to be asserted here at
the outset, as a caution against the widespread and erroneous impression that in
the seemingly verdant soils of Bougainville and Buka, 'anything can be made to
grow'. The land 'systems', as just defined, owe their similarities and
diversities to several factors, including the islands' geology and climate, and
the land-altering activities of its indigenous residents - which, it will be
recalled, have been taking place for 28,000 years. The geological history of
these islands has been marked by four land-forming processes; volcanism,
coral-limestone growth, tectonic movements, and weathering. At least three
p0eriods of major volcanism can be distinguished in the remote past - one prior
to the Miocene epoch and two during the Pleistocene. As the fiery cone of Mount
Bagana attests, volcanism continues to take place and to alter nearby
landscapes. The growth of coral limestone is also a continuing process along the
islands' shores; throughout two large areas - northern Bougainville and Buka,
and the Keriaka Plateau - raised limestone constitutes the entire bedrock. Heavy
rainfall and year-round tropical temperatures have served to mould all these
formations, as well as to build alluvial plains, to cut deep stream beds and to
create economically useless swamps. This brings us to the topic of climate.

The climate of the two islands is of the wet-tropical
or tropical-rainfall type, and it is remarkably equable the year round. The mean
annual temperature at sea level is about 26.7 degrees Centigrade; the monthly
sea-level mean temperatures vary only a degree or so above or below that mark,
and the average diurnal range at sea level is only about 10.6 degrees.
Temperatures are lower at higher elevations (according to records from
comparable places, mean temperature undergoes a drop of 1.35 degrees with every
300 metres), but here also they change within quite narrow monthly and diurnal
ranges, and nowhere reach conditions of frost. The alternating wind systems that
affect these islands consist of a variable set from the northwest, which occurs
between December and April, and a stronger, more continual set from the
southeast, which prevails from Mayh to December. These changes in wind have
little discernible effedct on (sea-level) temperatures but they exert some
influence on patterns of rainfall, particularly in the north.

Average rainfall at sea level is higher in the south
(about 3353 millimetres per annum) than in the north (about 2667 millimetres per
annum), and regional topographic factors serve to extend these differences
somewhat. (Rainfall also tends to increase with elevation, but there are too few
records available to indicate how much.) the north-westerly winds
(December-April) distribute about the same amount of rainfall over all parts of
both islands. during the southeast season (May-December), however, the
moisture-laden winds deposit more of their water on the southern slopes of
Bougainville's mountains, thereby accounting for the higher average annual
rainfall in the south. As a result of this circumstance, Buka and north
Bougainville undergo a dry season during this part of the year. but it is only
relatively dry - or rather, relatively less wet; the longest recorded period
without rain anywhere in these islands is only sixteen days, and the mean
duration of rainless days for both islands is three days or less for all months
of the year. The equability of the climate is also indicated by figures for
relative humidity. On the basis of observations at sea-level stations, the mean
monthly recordings range between only 75 and 86 per cent, and diurnal variations
for any one station are even smaller.

Certainly, climate should be considered as one of a
number of factors that affect the landscapes of the islands. In addition, of
course, climate exercises more direct influences on the lives of the human
inhabitants. For example, the unremittingly high temperature and relative
humidity undoubtedly affect the health and activities of expatriate visitors
from temperate climes. It is reasonable to assume - although difficult to prove
- that these climatic factors have some deleterious effects on the indigenes as
well, not only in the encouragement they offer to some kinds of diseases but
also in their influence upon levels of energy.

To the unsuspecting eye viewing these islands from the
air or the sea or even from the ground, humans appear to have made very little
impression upon the soils and the profuse vegetation, except for the areas
directly affected by mining activities (including the new urban centres and
sprawls), and the pockets of expatriate-developed plantations. Even some general
awareness of the economic uselessness of many of the land systems cannot
entirely erase the visual impression that the indigenous residents have barely
begun to exploit the economic potential of their land. The most striking
conclusion to be drawn from such a comparison is that in terms of existing types
of cultivation and their present ratio of mix, the agricultural potential has
already been pushed almost to its limit.

First Contacts with
Europeans

The first Europeans known to have sighted either
Bougainville or Buka were those aboard the British ship Swallow,
commanded by Philip Carteret. The Swallow passed within sight of Buka Island on
25 August 1767, but did not approach its sores. Bougainville Island itself was
first sighted on 4 July 1768 when the French ships La Boudeuse and
L'Etoile sailed along the eastern coasts of both islands and anchored
briefly off Buka. Here is the account of their encounter with the indigenes,
written by the expedition's commander, Louis de Bougainville:

After leaving the passage (west of Choiseul), we
discovered to the westward a long hilly coast, the tops of whose mountains were
covered with clouds. ... The 3d in the morning we saw nothing but the new coast,
which is of surprising height, and which lies N.W. by W. Its north part then
appeared terminated by a point which insensibly grows lower, and forms a
remarkable cape. I have it the name of Cape l'Averdi. On the 3d at noon it bore
about twelve leagues W, 1/2 N, and as we observed the sun 's meridian altitude,
we were enabled to determine the latitude of this cape with precision. The
clouds, which lay on the heights of the land dispersed at sun-setting, and
showed us mountain of a prodigious height. On the 4th, when the first rays of
the sun appeared, we got sight of some lands to the westward of Cape l'Averdi.
It was a new coast (Buka), less elevated than the former, lying N.N.W. Between
the S.S.E. point of this land and Cape l'Averdi, there remains a great gap,
forming either a passage or a considerable gulf (Buka Passage). At a great
distance we saw some hillocks on it. Behind this new coast we perceived a much
higher one, lying in the same direction. We stood as near as possible to come
near the low lands. At noon we wee about five leagues distant from it, and set
its N.N.W. point bearing S.W. by W. In the afternoon three periaguas
(canoes), in each of which were five or six negroes, came from the shore to view
our ships. They stopped within musket shot, and continued at that distance near
an hour, when our repeated invitations at last determined them to come nearer.
Some trifles which were thrown to them, fastened on pieces of planks, inspired
them with some confidence. They came along-side of the ships, shewing
cocoa-nuts, and crying houca, houca, onelle! They repeated these words
incessantly, and we afterwards pronounced them as they did, which seemed to give
them some pleasure. They did not long keep along-side of the vessel. They made
signs that they were going to fetch us cocoa-nuts. We applauded their
resolution; but they were hardly gone twenty yards (18 metres), when one of
these perfidious fellows let fly an arrow, which happily hit nobody. After that,
they fled as fast as they could row; our superior strength set us above
punishing them.

These negroes are quite naked; they have curled short
hair, and very long ears, which are bored through. Several had dyed their wool
red, and had white spots on different parts of the body. It seems they chew
betel as their teeth are red. ... This isle, which we named Buka, seems to be
extremely well people, if we may judge to by the great number of huts upon it,
and by the appearance of cultivation which it has. A fine plain, about the
middle of the coast, all over planted with cocoanut trees, another trees,
offered a most agreeable prospect, and made me very desirous of finding an
anchorage on it; but the contrary wind, and a rapid current, which carried
to the N.W. visibly brought us further from it.

During the quarter-century after Bougainville's brief
visit, other European vessels sailed within sight of these islands. The first
recorded shore visit took place in 1792, when d'Entrecasteaux's vessels lay off
the west coast of Buka for a few hours and carried on a lively trade with the
indigenes who came to meet them in their canoes. According to one journal of
this voyage, the islanders were more eager to obtain red cloth than iron. They
are described as astute in bargaining, as well as cheerful and friendly:

M. de Saint-Aignan played
them a fairly lively air on the violin, and the sound of this
instrument, new to them, appeared to please them greatly; they laughed
and jumped on the benches of their canoes. They offered in exchange for
this violin not only the bow which we had already asked of them, but
also some clubs they had not yet showed us. (Rossel, Voyage, vol.
1. p. 110, quoted in Dunmore 1965, p. 302).

During this period to her European vessels may have
made contact with the indigenes of Buka. When Sarah, an English whaler, lay off
northern Buka in 1812, the inhabitants traded with the visitors with some degree
of familiarity and with apparent appreciation of the utility of the glass
bottles and iron they received in exchange for their coconuts and weapons. Thereafter, until the end of the century, Bougainville and Buka were visited by
whites for four different purposes: by whalers in search of provisions and fresh
crews; by traders in search mainly of coconuts and copra; by labour recruiters;
and by explorers, English and German.

Between 1820 and 1860 British, French and American
vessels hunted sperm whales in the waters of the northern Solomon Islands, and
through them Bougainvillians acquired quantities of weapons, metal tools, cloth
and tobacco. During this period some Bougainvillians accompanied the vessels as
crew members, sometimes as far as Australia. As a by-product of their contacts,
foreign diseases and a liking for liquor were also introduced. Bougainvillians
had been trading with other islanders long before Europeans appeared on the
scene. Those in the north traded with Nissan and Kilinailau, and those in the
south with Shortland, Mono and Fauro.

More is known about the southern trade, in which the
Bougainvillean fish and lime (for betelnut chewing). When European traders
appeared on the scene, the Bougainvillians began to trade smoke-dried copra in
return for steel axe- and adze-blades, machetes and calico. Sometimes a
venturesome European trader would cast anchor off the southern Bougainville
coast and barter direct with local islanders, but in the beginning most of this
trade was carried out through Bougainville Strait islanders acting as middlemen.
Occasionally the latter also acquired live Bougainvillians, by kidnapping or
trade, to serve as menials or concubines or for religious sacrifice - and
probably for sale to Europeans as labourers. During the 1880s the Strait Islands
were under the suzerainty of Gorai, a famous Shortland Island chief, who
professed great respect and liking for Europeans. Gorai's influence, though not
his actual rule, extended up Bougainville's eastern coast as far as Cape
l'Averdy. On one occasion he sent a fleet of his war canoes to the village of
Numa Numa, 160 kilometres north of Shortland, and killed a score of its people
to avenge the killing of a white trader with whom he was friendly.

A detailed description of a foreign trading visit is
provided by the German museum collector, Carl Ribbe, who accompanied a
white trader, based on Shortland, on some of his voyages to Bougainville in
1894-5, I reproduce here my translation of an abridged account of one of these
visits - this one to the Buin coast just east of Kangu - because of the picture
it gave of the manner in which commercial relations between Europeans and
indigenes were conducted during that era:

Mr Tindal and I left Faisi (the main port on Shortland
Island) in a small two-masted cutter. ... Around four in the afternoon we drew
near to the Bougainville coast ... From where we were the land looked flat in
every direction except for two or three 100-metre-high hills directly on the
coast (i.e. Kangu Hill). The whole southern Bougainville plain was canopied by
tall tress ... and channelled by numerous full-flooded streams. Far to the
north-east the horizon was dominated by several high and steep-sided mountains,
comprising the Crown Prince Range. ... The narrow strip of hill country between
mountains and plain are, like the latter, covered with a high stand of forest
but the mountains themselves appeared to be only partly forested. ...

On first seeing these mountains I thought to myself
what a rich field of research they must offer to the naturalist. Unfortunately,
it would be virtually impossible to get to them, because the country approaching
them is said to be densely populated by inhospitable and warlike tribes, whose
opposition would prove even more difficult to overcome because of their
ignorance of the power of firearms. Cases have been reported in which such
islanders as these have ridiculed their fire-arm bearing opponents, asking what
possible effect the latter's noise-making bamboo sticks could have against their
own formidable spears and bows and arrows.

it has been my experience that when accompanying a
small-sized expedition into the interior of islands in this part of the world,
one has less to fear from the hostility of the natives who have already
experienced some contact with whites than from those who have never before seen
them. Typically, when a small party of explorers is opposed by indigenes with no
prior experiences with firearms it is apt to be wiped out in the first assault.
Since the thick undergrowth conceals the attackers struck down by bullets, their
unwounded fellows remain unaware of the deadliness of firearms and so press
their attack fearlessly and relentlessly ...

From where we lay at anchor off shore no houses or
canoes were to be seen along the beach, the native villages being located some
five to six kilometres inland. ... We remained aboard our cutter that night,
then, shortly after sunrise, four of our Shortland Island servants took off for
the villages of Suriei and Takerei to inform the villagers that we had come to
trade for copra. Each of our messengers was of course armed with rifle and
revolver, for we could not rule out the possibility that they might meet up with
hostile mountaineers and be obliged to fight. ... Shortly after noon we were
hailed from the shore, where we saw many indigenes alongside several piles of
copra. The cutter's boat was rowed to the beach to bring back some villagers and
their copra, and the trading then began - during which, I should add, we kept
our firearms constantly at the ready. . . .

The bartering indigenes were permitted to board the
cutter from one side only. While one of us whites occupied himself with the
trading, the other kept a close watch to guard against attackhis kind of
trading is no great pleasure - indeed, it is long drawn out and boring. However,
it is essential not to give up or lose patience; otherwise the blacks would not
bother to return to trade another time. The owners of the long strings of dried
coconut chunks usually delegate negotiations to one or two of their number, who
invariably, in the beginning, demand exorbitant prices. Then, before any
transaction is concluded, each of the villagers o9resent is asked whether he
agrees with the terms offered. They appear to have no conception of the monetary
value of the various trade items offered to them. It often happens that they
will first demand a ridiculously high trade price for their copra, and then in
the end he satisfied with a very modest return. Thus, one can obtain 100
coconuts for 65 pfennigs worth of calico, or for 10 coconuts they will accept
either a clay pipe worth 1.2/2 pfennigs or 2 sticks of tobacco worth 5. A short muchete costing 40 pfennigs will purchase 50 coconuts, while a long one coasting
1 mark will obtain 100. A box of matches worth 4 pfennigs will obtain 10
coconuts, a Jew's-harp worth 15, 30 coconuts, and an axe worth 1 mark will
obtain 100. From these few examples one can see . . . that the indigenes have no
idea of the relative values of the trade goods they obtain with their coconuts.
The state of affairs, which often results in a disadvantage to the white traders
(when indigenes demand too highly priced goods for their coconuts) is the fault
of the traders themselves. (How much more often, one may inquire, did
this 'state of affairs' result in disadvantage to the indigenes?)

The trader has to exercise special care to protect his
own interest when the indigenes demand calico for their copra, since the
customary method for measuring cloth can work to the latter's advantage. the
unit of measure used here is the 'fathom', the span between fingertips of a
person's outstretched arms. The length of this span can of course be varied
according to the extent that one stretches the arms and the way one holds the
cloth. And it is not surprising that the indigenes insist upon having the
measurement done by the man with the longest arms. (One can well understand what
diplomacy the trader is called upon to exercise in winning agreement to use a
shorter-armed man as a measure.) Distance from outstretched fingertip to nipple
also serves as a unit of measure, as does the distance between the outstretched
tips of thumb and index finger - these measurements being usd when the indigenes
exchange their coconuts, etc. for strings of shell money (mauu'ai, perasali).

thus, the whole commerce is a form of barter - which
incidentally, is highly profitable to the white traders in this part of the
Solomons. The copra, which the trader sells to the schooners that ply these
waters, at seven and eight pounds sterling a ton (i.e. 5000 coconuts), he is
able to buy from the indigenes at three pounds, thereby realizing a profit of
four to five pounds per ton. Among Bougainvillians the trade goods in most
demand are hatchers, axes (with metre or half-metre long handles), pocket
knives, large blue and red heads for necklaces, small red, blue and white beads
used for making ornaments, porcelain bracelets, tobacco and pipes, thin,
patterned or red or white calico, plane blades for wood-working, mirrors and
Jews' harps.

The indigenes also extend this form of trade among
themselves. some goods obtained from the white traders end up in increasingly
high prices, so that a distant inlander will pay 300 to 400 coconuts for a
hatchet that was obtained at the beach for only 100.

Ribbe went on to say that it was the cop0ra trade that
had made the southern Bougainville coast a safer place for outsiders to visit.
After about 1870 Bougainvillians were recruited to large numbers for plantations
in Queensland, Fiji, Samoa, and New Britain. those of Buka were in especially
heavy demand because of their reputation for trustworthiness and industry. for
example, the German trader-planner, Richard Parkinson, found his Buka labourers
to be invaluable protection from his hostile indigenous neighbours in the
Blanche Bay area of New Britain. 'I always licked them fearfully with my Bouka
boys of which I have 150.' Some of the Bougainvillians (including Buka) went
voluntarily with the European recruiters, evidently eager for the European goods
to be earned, or to escape from dangerous situations at home. but others went
under duress, as in th case of those kidnapped by the Melbourne vessel Carl
for work on Fiji.

The Carl was owned by an Irish physician, Dr
James Murray, who embarked upon his South Seas adventures in 1871 after a series
of scandalous scrapes in Australia. After 'recruiting' - that is, kidnapping -
nearly eighty indigenes from various islands in the New Hebrides and Solomon
Islands and imprisoning them in the vessel's holds, he sailed his ship to
northern Bougainville and Buka. Here is Edward Docker's recent reconstruction of
what ensued:

Even King Ghorai of the Shortlands with his mighty war
fleet never dared attack Buka, and with visiting ships the big, very black
Bukamen paddled out in their twenty-man canoes prepared either to trade or fight
as the mood suggested. They never had such a shock in their lives. large lumps
of pigiron or cannon slung in ropes crashed down on the canoes, then
immediately, as they struggled in the water, with many of them badly gashed and
bruised, the boats were among them, hauling them in like tuna. The score was
forty the first day, forty-five the next. the earlier captive were now stowed
right forward and aft, with the eighty-five Bukamen under the main lurch. Not
one was either handcuffed nor leg-ironed.

That evening there was much recrimination on deck among
Murray's party about these methods of recruitment - with no attention being paid
to what was happening below. Here the Bukamen had broken up their bunks and were
using them as implements to force open the hatch. Before long the clamour from
the hold drowned out all sounds of the dispute on deck and settled the argument
among the white men, at least for the time being. The best-corroborated version
of the events of that evening are supplied by a woman, Davescove. He later
testified:

'I was awakened about ten by the boy Fallon coming to
my bunk, an d asking me for God's sake to come on deck, as the ship was on fire,
and they would be all dead men. I went on deck, and to the main hatch, where ai
found the passengers and others assembled, called out to the natives to keep
quiet. I saw no signs of fire, and went below to the cabin for a minute. While
away I heard sounds of firing, and returned on deck, and saw William Scott, Dr
Murray, Captain Armstrong, and others firing down into the hold. The natives
were fighting amongst themselves, and trying to break open the hatchways, Mount
and Morris were firing with revolvers.

'After the natives had been fighting a bit they would
stop for a few minutes, and then the firing would cease, and be resumed when the
row began again. I went to the cabin after the first row was quieted. I saw
Morris there loading a rifle, and Dr Murray loading a revolver. There was firing
off and on during the night. I fired myself, once or twice, before I saw Morris
and Murray in the cabin. At one o'clock in the morning the mate raised a cry
that the natives had charge of the deck, and Dr Murray called out, "Shoot them,
shoot them, shoot every one of them."

'When daylight broke, everything was quiet. The
shooting continued, off and on, until about three o'clock, or half-past three,
when we knocked off altogether. The firing was resumed at intervals of five, ten
and fifteen minutes, and sometimes half an hour elapsed between the rows. At
four o'clock everything was quiet, and I went into the galley and served out
some coffee to the men and passengers. After a bit Dr Murray came aft. Lewis,
the second mate, said, "What would people say to my killing twelve niggers
before breakfast?" Dr Murray replied, "My word, that's the proper way to pop
them off."

'Everything was then quiet, and breakfast was got
ready. After breakfast the ladder was put down the hold by the passengers and
crew, and the natives were told to come on deck. some of the wounded natives
came up; they were wounded in the back, arms, and legs. Those who had a narrow
wound were put on one side, and those more dangerously wounded on the other. All
the wounded natives who could come up, came up. Two of the good natives were
sent down by Dr Murray with ropes, which they fixed round those who were
dangerously wounded, so that they could be hauled up. the wounded were separated
as I have described by Dr Murray's directions. The passengers were looking on
all the time, and Mount and Morris told the natives to do their work.

'I heard them tell them to lay the wounded down, and
make fast their hands.

'Dr Murray went forward to the starboard side of the
ship, and said, "Well, boys, what do you think of doing with these men?" Mount
asked, "What do you think of doing?" "Well," said Murray, "I think that the best
we can do is to get the leeward of the island and land them there." A man said,
"How far are we from land?" Dr Murray answered, "I don't know, but not very
far." Mount said, "You have been gaffer all this time, what are you going to
do?" Dr Murray then took four or five of the friendly natives an d went aft, and
told them to pick up a man and throw him overboard. There was a boy with six
fingers and six toes, who was wounded in the wrist, and he was the first thrown
overboard. When Dr Murray told the friendly natives to pick up the boy, the
other natives screamed "No, no, no!" He was lifted onto the rail, and Dr Murray
pushed him overboard. He was the first who was thrown overboard. At this, all
the Bougainville men who could do so, jumped overboard.'

In the end the total of natives killed outright or
tossed badly wounded into the sea amounted to seventy. Another fifteen or so of
the unwounded may have swam safely ashore, which now left on board the
seventy-six so-called 'friendly' natives. One result of the abortive mutiny was
that the Malaitamen had completely abandoned their former overhasty ideas of
escape.

Some of the Europeans who took part in these outrages
were eventually arrested and sentenced to death or terms in prison, but the
agile and ingratiating Dr Murray tuned Queen's evidence and escaped punishment
altogether.

The most detailed account of labour recruiting on
Bougainville - Buka is that of Douglas Rannie, who accompanied a recruiting
expedition on board an Australian vessel as government agent. The vessel stopped
twice off Bougainville-Buka in search of recruits for the Queensland sugar
fields; first at an unspecified point off Bougainville's northwest coast, and
then off Buka. The different receptions accorded the vessel at these two points
serve to show how different the inhabitants of the two islands had by then
become in terms of their experience and sophistication in dealing with whites:

On the morning of the 25th of June we lowered our boats
about eight o'clock and made towards the shore. This being the weather side, a
very heavy surf was breaking on the beach; so heavy, indeed, that for some time
we thought we should have to give up all idea of getting into communication with
the natives, whom we saw in large numbers lined up on the sand.

There appeared to be two tribes assembled. They did not
seem to be upon amicable terms, as they held aloof from one another. They were
all heavily armed with very long bows and sheaves of arrows. Besides these
weapons some carried spears, and each man had suspended from his shoulder a
tomahawk, club, or heavy wooden sword. The tribes were distinguished by the
colour of their head-dress. This was composed of a hat exactly resembling an
egg-shaped lamp-globe and of similar size. These hats were made of basket-work,
and beautifully covered and sewn with the skin of the pandanus leaf. They
reminded me more than anything else of the baskets used in billiard-rooms for
pool and pyramid balls. The opening was not much wider, although it might have
admitted a cricket ball; into this the natives towed their long, woolly hair.
The large amount of hair they managed to stuff in caused the hats to stick up
jauntily on the side of the head. The hats worn by one tribe were all white,
while those worn by the other were stained a bright red.

Pulling along the coast we came to a smooth part, and
were able to approach nearer the islanders. After a lot of persuasion we induced
them to approach nearer to each other as well as to us. Both tribes wished to
enter into communication with us, and both had stuff for barter. As neither
would entirely trust the other, they each left a strong armed p0arty immediately
behind them in the scrub as guards. The mate, with his boat stern first,
cautiously approached what seemed to be the most moderate break in the surf, and
I directed his attention to the heavy break which occurred with every third or
fourth wave outside the ordinary surf. As a man came out neck-deep in the water,
holding a young sucking pig over this had, the mate ventured too much. A huge
wave broke over the bows of his boat, filled her and swept here right up on the
beach. The boat's crew leaped out before she grounded, having first secured
their rifles. Many of the islanders ran for their weapons, but others professed
to offer assistance. In the meantime we were outside the influence of the surf,
and covered the other boat's crew with our rifles. The natives ashore seemed to
be of two minds. Some, I thought, desired to assist our men, while others were
inclined to go for loot. but the fact that our men still retained their arms
ashore, and we were almost out of range of their arrows, and had them well
covered, decided them to help us in our difficulty and trust to our generosity
for remuneration. A number of them turned to with a will, and after the mate had
given them all the print and calicoes, besides beads, pipes, and tobacco, which
he had in the trade box (the axes, tomahawks, long knives, and butcher's knives
were in the bottom of the boat), they re-launched the boat. but alas! before the
boat's crew could get her under way with their oars, a great rolling sea caused
her to broach-to and capsize, and surge in towards the beach, bottom up, with
the crew underneath. One by one they struggled out. The mate was dragged out
with a horrible gash on the back of his head and neck, from which the blood
flowed freely. Hastily we unbent the painter and the sheet of our big-sail, and
backing the boat in as far as we deemed safe through the surf, we threw the
boat's crew the rope. They made it first to the mate, and we were able to draw
him through the surf to us. Pulling out to a safe distance beyond the breakers,
we rendered what first aid we could to the wounded man.

A terrible scene ensued ashore. The natives of both
tribes rushed down to the boat, dragged her up on to the beach, and fought
savagely for the axes, tomahawks, and knives that were lying in from two to
three feet (60 to 90 centimetres) of water. Two natives would be
struggling for an axe. One would manage to free his arm, with the axe aloft' and
the next instant it would be brought crash, down through the skull of the other
unfortunate one. Several could be seen fighting and slashing each other with the
long knives and butcher knives, as they rolled over and over each other in the
water. Those ashore along the fringe of scrub took up the fight, and a general
battle ensued. The arrows were flying in the air like showers of hail. Presently
a large body of men charged out from the scrub, on those nearest the boat (they
had manoeuvred round through the back of the scrub from the tribe of the white
hats), and making a wild dash among the bowmen of the red hats, mowed them down
with tomahawks and hardwood swords before the red hats had time to unsling their
weapons. The red hats then took to flight, but were followed by the white hats
with showers of arrows until the bush gave them shelter. There must have been
upwards of a thousand engaged in the fray, and the casualties were very
numerous. Seeing that we could not do much more until our second boat was
patched up, we made for the north end of Bougainville and came to anchor at Buka
Island.

We were visited at Buka Island by large numbers of
islanders in many canoes. The canoes carried from ten to sixty men in each. As
many of them were as high in the sides as our own little vessel, we made a rule
that canoes were to be allowed on one side only, and that the starboard. The
port side was to be kept clear, as well as the main deck on the port side; so
the ship was roped off fore and aft amidships. We had also to be constantly on
the watch and always armed; for, on the slightest show of carelessness on our
part, or of being off guard, we should all have been massacred for the sake of
loot.

One of our boatmen told me
that on a previous visit he had been shown on a clear day the hull and
masts of a vessel lying on the horizon in deep water. She had been taken
and looted by the natives and then sunk. We secured the services of an
islander here as an interpreter. He was the only one able to speak
English. He told us that his name was 'Maggy', and that he had worked
for a Mr Farrell in Samoa. Maggy piloted us to quite a number of
villages, but found no one anxious to emigrate to Queensland. The
villages were kept as clean and ship-shape as any in the Shortlands, and
the natives displayed as much taste in the manner in which their plots
of flowers and flowering plants about their houses were attended to. As
the Shortlands I noticed that the dead were buried in the ground and
large cairns of stones were piled over the graves, these again were
filled in with soil, and the interstices planted with bright and
fragrant flowers. but here the dead were disposed of in quite a
different manner. We had an opportunity while on a visit to one of the
villages of seeing their strange funeral ceremony. The corpse was
carried down to and over the ref by a few of the deceased's comrades,
followed by a crowd of women wailing and performing strange antics. At
the edge of the reef the remains were placed in a canoe, paddled out
some hundred yards or so, and with a few heavy stones attached were sunk
to the bottom. although five from any particular amount of general
sickness, and physically as fine a race of people as we had so far met,
80 per cent of them seemed to be afflicted with a disagreeable skin
disease they called 'buckwah' (?). This disease breaks out in patches on
the body in the form of a number of small dry rings, resembling
ringworm. They spread till the whole body becomes covered with a
mass of dry, scaly rings, which comes off a flakes and dust. I have
cured many of the sufferers with a mixture of sulphur and kerosene,
applied with a large paint brush. Clean -skinned natives seem to have a
horror of contracting the disease.

We found the islanders very
skilful in the manufacture of spears and arrows, and many of their
weapons were tastefully inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Pearl-shell appears
to be fairly plentiful in those regions. From the many patches of reef s
we sailed over. I believe large quantities of shell could be obtained.
Three days were spent in visiting villages scattered here and there, but
all our recruiter's eloquence could not induce any of the natives to
engage in the Queensland sugar industry. So the skipper decided to make
a move the following day. That evening two large canoes came along from
some foraging expedition. Their crews, numbering about forty each, were
quite jubilant over some foray, or success. They clicked their paddles
on the side of their canoes, keeping time to a wild chant or war song.

The paddles of these canoes
had each the design of a dancing demon stained on it in permanent black
and red dyes. Crouched despondent in the bottom of one of the two
canoes, we noticed, as they came alongside, a wild, powerful-looking
man. After an animated conference with the savages in the canoes, our
interpreter Maggy approached the skipper and me, and told us that the
savages had a captive in one of their canoes whom they wished to dispose
of by selling them to us. I said that the strict meaning of the Act
would not allow any such mode of recruiting. Yet as the circumstances of
the case seemed very peculiar, I determined that I would go into them
very carefully.

Impressing upon Maggy that
he must speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, I elicited through
him from the canoe savages that the man whom they now wanted us to take
was a captive they had made upon their present expedition. They were
taking him home with them, there to be dealt with in a way that even Maggy hesitated to describe. I inferred that he was to be put to death,
and eaten. I got Maggy to explain to the captive that if he chose to
come of his own free will on board of us he could do so, and that if he
chose to leave the ship at any place to the islands no one would prevent
him. As he came on board under peculiar circumstances, the same
circumstances would allow him to go ashore anywhere he liked where the
ship should touch before leaving for Queensland. As we had an
interpreter on board who could speak his own language, the whole of the
nature of the work expected of South Sea Islanders on Queensland
plantations would now be fully explained to him, together with the
nature and terms of agreement. but that he would not be called upon to
enter into that agreement until some time during the trip when others
might be signed on.

All this I was confident
Maggy faithfully explained to him, and he came very joyfully aboard. In
return, the savages, at their captive's hands, received a bundle of
fancy-coloured print, in which were rolled up some glass beads, paint,
tobacco, a couple of butcher's knives, and a tomahawk. I made the parcel
of trade come from the captive as a ransom paid by himself, and not as
the price paid for a slave. Thus we got our first recruit, and he was
entered on the Passenger List as No. 1, Cheeks and Buka, Bougainville.
He was about twenty-five years of age, well built and muscular-looking,
with a huge head of hair hanging in a mass of ringlets down to his
shoulders. Each ringlet was plastered thick with lime and cocoa-nut. We
soon set one of the crew to work with the scissors and his locks were
consigned to the deep. Cheeks was quite pleased with the change, and was
anxious to adopt European habits at once, so great was his delight at
escaping from his enemies. And yet, he told me afterwards, he had never
seen a white man in his life before.

The effects of these early encounters between
Bougainvillians and white must have varied widely. some of the former, mainly
coast-dwellers, and especially those of Buka and northern Bougainville, became
well acquainted with the material goods and customs of whites, and with their
characters, both good and bad. Many, however, experienced nothing of the new
alien influences except the occasional steel tool that filtered to them through
coastal intermediaries. One of the most detailed accounts of that period was
written by H.B. guppy, the naval surgeon attached to a British exploring
expedition to the Solomon Islands in 1882. This writer tarried for several
months in the islands of the Bougainville Strait and made several visits to the
south coast of Bougainville itself. guppy collected much useful information
concerning the indigenes and the natural resources of southern and eastern
Bougainville, including specimens of ore that led him to make the prophetic
statements: 'A sample of stream tin from the southeast part of Bougainville was
given to me by the Shortland chief. Copper will not improbably be found in
association with the serpentine rocks of these islands.'

Until 1884 Bougainville-Buka continued to remain
outside the administrative domain of any European power, although British
subjects (including some Australians) were most in evidence there, as visiting
traders and labour recruiters. This situation began to change in 1834 when
Germany annexed northeast New guinea (Kaiser-Wilhelmsland) and the Bismarck
Archipelago. This action moved Queensland, and eventually Britain, to annex
Papua (i.e., southeast New Guinea). Bougainville and Buka were not officially
added to the German colony until 1899, but by an exchange of notes with Britain,
in 1886, these islands (along with Shortland, Choiseul, and Isabel) were
declared to be within the German sphere of influence. In fact, German influence
began to extend to Bougainville and Buka some years earlier in the persons of
traders, explorers and recruiters of labourers for plantations on Samoa, the
Bismarck Archipelago and elsewhere. The best-known of those early Germans was
the Richard Parkinson referred to earlier. Parkinson had moved to New Britain
from Samoa in 1882. (His wife was sister to the much-married Emma Forsyth -
'Queen Emma' - who had gone from Samoa to New Britain earlier and had
established extensive trading and plantation enterprises in the Duke of York
Islands and on Blanche Bay.) Froi his New Britain base Parkinson made many trips
to Bougainville and Buka, trading, recruiting, and collecting natural history
specimens; he recorded his observation in several scientific papers and in his
lengthy book: Dressig Jahre in der Sudsee (Thirty Years in the south
Seas.) In summarizing his findings, Parkinson reported that by the turn of the
century the coastal inhabitants had become fairly familiar with Europeans,
through trading with them or serving on their plantations on New Britain and
elsewhere, but that the interior of the larger island remained 'virtually
closed-off'.

Ignorance about Bougainville's inland areas during that
era can be attributed partly too its physical inaccessibility, partly to their
inhabitants' ways of life, and partly to the behaviour of the white visitors
themselves. During the nineteenth century, and probably for centuries and
millennia before, the native people were separated into numerous minute tribes
whose interrelations, if any, were typically hostile, with the exception of
occasional instances of intertribal trade. Moreover, this normal state of
hostility was more often than not intensified in specific cases where one tribe
was made up of coast-dwellers and the other of islanders. This antagonism was
for a time reinforced by the appearance on the scene of white traders and labour
against their traditional enemies. for some islanders the only way to acquire
the eagerly sought European trade goods was by raids against coastal
settlements. Also it is likely that many of the inlanders who ended up in the
hands of labour recruiters arrived there through kidnapping by coastal
middlemen.

In addition, much of the initial hostility shown to
whites was the direct result of the latters' bahaviour. for every Parkinson
visiting these shores - for every white who viewed the indigenes with
intellectual curiosity and treated them with some degree of fairness and
humanity - there were many others who considered them to be subhuman and handled
them fraudulently and brutally. before some measure of colonial authority was
established, the only constraint exercised by most traders and recruiters was
their wish again to trade and recruit there some day. Here is Parkinson's
description of the labour recruiters' part in this contact:

The recruiters concentrated
their efforts on the filling of their ships. From place to place they
went, searching the coast up and down with their boats, and, whether or
not, came into conflict with the natives who could not make themselves
understood, and who knew from experience and hearsay the methods of
recruiting labourers which they regarded as pure kidnapping.

No wonder, then, that the Bougainvillians of that era
earned reputations for hostility against whites, all whites. As Parkinson
recorded:

Murders of white men were
recorded every year, murders that were brought about by the victims' own
fault, or, as was unfortunately the case, done to avenge the misdeeds of
other recruiters. Every white person was regarded as an enemy,
recruiter, trader or missionary; the crime of another has often caused
the death of a perfectly harmless and peaceful man.

In 1902 the Catholic Society of Mary extended its
missionary endeavours in the Solomon Islands by setting up a station on
Bougainville's eastern coast, near Kieta. Then, in 1905 the German colonial
administration at Rabaul established a post at Kieta, and at about the same time
a few European planters and traders began to settle along the eastern and
northern coasts of Bougainville and along Buka's western and southern coasts.
Between 1899 (when these islands were officially annexed) and 1905, German
political control - such as it was - was administered by means of occasional
visits of officials from Rabaul.